"Sharp, quirky, and occasionally nettlesome", Walking the Berkshires is my personal blog, an eclectic weaving of human narrative, natural history, and other personal passions with the Berkshire and Litchfield Hills as both its backdrop and point of departure. I am interested in how land and people, past and present manifest in the broader landscape and social fabric of our communities. The opinions I express here are mine alone. Never had ads, never will.

June 12, 2008

Dead Movies

Someone must have it in for swashbucklers. Or possibly for films with Oliver Reed and Charlton Heston, for how else do you explain the fact that the classic 1973 version of The Three Musketeers and its equally brilliant (1974) sequel are unavailable on DVD, let alone in Blue Ray format? Go ahead, try and order them through Netflix. Or the terrific 1990 TNT version of Treasure Island with Christopher Lee, Christian Bale and, yes, Oliver Reed again as Billy Bones and Charlton Heston as "the seafaring man with one leg". Then there's Topsy Turvey, a terrific costume flick from 1999, and if you have tossed your old VHS machine you are are fresh out of luck 'cause it never went to disc.

These are not obscure B movies from the black and white era. They are not films that appeal only to film snobs. Actually, with the possible exception of Topsy Turvey, they have a decidedly broad appeal as action adventure romps. Whereas the triad of Pirates of the Caribbean amount to little more than lurching, soulless, CG exploitation, these films are truly buried treasures. There is some hope for Oliver Reed, as Royal Flash came out at long last on DVD, but this is an exception and certainly not the rule.

So what other movies are out there lost on video and shamefully denied their disc debut? Who do you want to see on DVD?

More: (6/15/2008): Alert reader Jeanne discovers that the Musketeer Movies were released together on DVD and are available as The Complete Musketeers! Also that Topsy Turvey had a brief DVD run but is now out of print. .

Others Not yet available on disc:
Les Amants de Teruel (Lovers of Teruel) a dance set in Spain and filmed by Claude Renoir in 1962. Gorgeous photography. A tragic fantasy romance.

Monsignor Quixote pairs Alec Guiness and Leo McKern in a film version of Graham Greene's retelling of Cervantes in modern Spain. Guiness is an elderly village priest who travels with Sancho (McKern), the village mayor, in the mayor's car named Rosinante. It was made for a TV show called Great Performances and hos appeared in the US in VHS. The only disc release was made for region 2.
--ml

Dear Berks ,
Sometimes litigation holds up DVD release . It seemed DeMille's "Unconquered " would never be released but it was ! I'd like to see "So Red the Rose " ( 1935 , I think ) , "The Royal African Rifles, The Green Years ,The Light that Failed , The Adventures of Mark Twain , and Lloyds of London ," for starters.
cordially ,
David Corbett